Leave it to summer vacations to creep up and smack you down with fancy drinks. I’m sailing out on the Disney Fantasy May 3 and I’m terrified. I finally got into bikini condition and those umbrella spawns of Satan lay in wait. Alcoholic drinks are heavy with calories, sugar, and even salt but if you must drink (as I feel I should) I’ve come across some healthier options to order. Here are some ways to lighten the load:

1. *Ask for seltzer water over soda or tonic that way you avoid the extra sodium and other additives.
2. *Flavored sodas themselves are just plain toxic but if you must, use diet soda over the regular stuff. The alcohol should mask the diety taste and you’ll save a couple of hundred calories.
3. *Order drinks with natural ingredients- coffee, lemon, berries, ginger. Their proven health benefits may not offset the negative effects of alcohol but it’s a nice little offering to the psyche.
4. *If you have to have that screwdriver or sex on the beach don’t use anything other than fresh-squeezed or 100 percent fruit juice as a mixer. Normal bar juices have added sugar.
5. *Light alcohols not only have fewer calories but less “congeners” than darker alcohols. Plus, those byproducts of fermentation are usually serious hangover culprits.

Suggestions from the bar:

Fruit mojito (rum, seltzer and muddled fresh fruit)

Seabreeze

Mint Julep

Bloody Mary

Screwdriver

Tequila Sunrise

Lite White Russian (use skim milk)

Tom Collins

Tropical rum punch with fresh 100% fruit juice and light rum

Fuzzy navel

Pina Colado with coconut milk and fresh pineapple. Do not let them use a mix!

Mimosa (seltzer not soda)

Now, go ahead and raise a toast to the end of ski season and the return of bikini season!

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